On the Evolution of Preferences

A common feature of the literature on the evolution of preferencesis that evolution favors nonmaterialistic preferences only if preferencetypes are observable at least to some degree. We argue that this resultis due to the assumption that in each state of the evolutionary dynam-ics some Bayesian Nash equilibrium is played. We show that underunobservability of preference types, conditional on selecting some self-con…rming equilibrium as a rule for mapping preference into behavior,non-sel…sh preferences may be evolutionarily successful.